It’s time to brew a Black IPA – or a Cascadian Dark Ale, as they are often called – again. Steve and I brewed a Black IPA, loosely based on a Steve Altimari recipe, back in 2009, and it is one of the top page views on this blog. It was an awesome ale, with a huge citrusy flavor and nose. But, the Sinamar we used for “beer food coloring” to darken the ale, left the ale muddy and I want to try and avoid that this time. I’ll be using a combination of Belgian De-Bittered Black Malt and Weyermann Carafa III to naturally darken the ale. Both of these roasted malts bring lots of color, but very little roasty flavor or astringency. I am hoping for a bit of roastiness, along the lines of Rubicon Brewing’s Capricorn Black IPA. Also, I’ll only be adding half of the two pounds of dark malts to the main mash grist. I read on one of the brew boards that you can still get the color by adding the dark malts for the last fifteen minutes of the mash, but it mellows the roastiness and rounds off the edge of the astringency. I do have some Sinamar on hand in case I’m not pleased with the color of the wort after the mash, but I’m hoping not to use it.

I also changed up the bittering hops in this batch. I’ll be using Millenium hops in place of the Magnums we used last time. My home town IPA, Dust Bowl Brewing’sHops of Wrath relies heavily on Mellenium hops. In the words of Dust Bowl’s head brewer, Don Oliver, “Think big alpha plus herbal – delicious hop!” I’m sold! Finally, I’ll be lucky to get all thirty pounds of grain in my mash tun. Here’s the updated recipe for Back in Black IPA:

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2 Responses to Black IPA – Round 2

Just pulled a sample of this, started at 1.064 (I really missed my numbers, but that tends to happen the fuller my mashtun gets:) and 10 days later is at 1.015. I’d love to get one or two more points off of it, so I’ll be swirling the fermenter for the next couple days. Hydrometer sample tasted great – light roastiness, moderate bitterness. I dropped in 3 oz of Amarillo pellets. At least 2 oz more in a couple days, and I’m debating on maybe 1 oz of Simcoe…